Stupid Stories

The day before Thanksgiving is the king of all stupid stories days. These are the days of the year when the media decides to dominate that day’s news with completely useless information. There are random stupid stories, such as some movie star doing something stupid. Then there are scheduled stupid stories such as the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. The reason this day is the king of all useless stories days is that it is the combination of three useless stories all in one day. Call it the perfect storm of stupid stories days.

Storm 1 – Black Friday Preparation

For some reason most media outlets think that we have any interest in the misguided youths, unemployed, or otherwise confused consumers who have decided to camp out at their local Best Buy or other retailer for sales that will begin Friday. We are supposed to be interested in people who will spend their Thanksgiving sitting on pavement outside a store for hours on end, eating their can of baked beans hoping their investment of time will pay off in a $100 reduced price of a TV. Whenever you see these people, just remember that their vote for president counts just as much as yours.

Storm 2 – Butterball Lady

We all know that Thanksgiving is a special holiday, and an American tradition. Do we have to spoil it with a 5 minute advertisement for Butterball Turkey across all media outlets? Is it possible that someone who is hosting Thanksgiving dinner is still looking for information on how to cook a Turkey the day before their house is going to be filled with people? If this is true, thank goodness that she gives us the hotline phone number (also on the bird) for any turkey emergencies.

Storm 3 – Busy Travel Day

The day before Thanksgiving is one of the busiest travel days of the year. This is why we get to see a top notch reporter standing at the airport. Perhaps we are even lucky enough to hear an interview, and find out who some random person is visiting. Scintillating! Just think how unimportant this story is. If you are traveling or waiting for someone, you are not watching the story. Even if you are watching at the airport just when they are about to tell you something useful, they say, “make sure to check with your airline for information”. Isn’t that what you would have done anyway?

The issue isn’t that these things aren’t important to somebody (I guess), it is that they are not “news”. What stories or reports are shelved to give us these gems? If you missed these stupid stories, don’t worry you will have plenty of chances throughout the year. There will be late gift buyer story on December 24th, or tax return wait-till-the-last-minute story on April 15th. If this isn’t enough, I’m sure Charlie Sheen or Lindsay Lohan are planning something special for all of us.

Author Bio:

Michael has been an editor and contributor at the website www.freemarketsfreepeople.net for over 2 years. He has over 20+ years of diverse business experience, from running complex operations where he managed hundreds of people, to starting and running small businesses such as www.realinterestfund.com. He is blessed, or perhaps cursed, with a logical mind which he uses to analyze government, media, politics, and culture. He believes that his life experiences help him bring a unique perspective to the issues of the day.

Wouldn’t it have been nice if one of these reporters could have been seen on the t.v. reporting to the American people who killed the embassador? who started the video story? who sent Susan Rice to the talk shows? Those question answered would have made Thanksgiving greater and the Butterball Turkey happy.

RickonhisHarleyJohnson

And the sad part? … ‘Whenever you see these people, just remember that their vote for president counts just as much as yours.’

pborden41

Michael: They run these stories because they don’t have the brains or will to cover really important things. Look at the political coverage. The media wouldn’t know what to do if there weren’t polls to write about. Issues? They don’t have the background or the will to dig into what is really going on. So we have superficial stories like the day before Thanksgiving news. On Christmas, we will have last-minute shoppers stories. In a heat wave, we’ll have pictures of kids playing in fire hydrants. BTW, I say this from experience because I was in the newspaper business for over 30 years. Interestingly, the larger the newspaper I worked for, the dumber the editor seemed to be and the more mindless the stories. Of course, two of the papers I worked for were Gannett papers so that probably explains a lot.